9 Reasons You Should Keep Your Landline

With wireless phones dominating communication, you might be asking yourself if you still need a home phone. Well, it might not be a necessity, but there are plenty of reasons a landline is good to have around. If you’re thinking about ditching that landline and sticking with using just your cell, here are nine reasons you might want to reconsider.
1. Better Emergency Access
Your home phone is a better tool for contacting 911 in an emergency. When you call from a landline, emergency dispatchers can see your home address and know where to find you, which you can’t do with a cell phone. This could be life-saving if you’re in a position where you’re unable to communicate clearly and emergency services need to find you. A cell phone might have your address associated with it, but there’s no way to immediately identify where you’re calling from when you use it.
2. Avoid Power Problems
When a power or system outage occurs, your cell phone service could go down with it. Landlines, however, operate through the use of copper cables and are self-powering. Even in an emergency, your landline can still work, whereas you can’t charge a cell phone without electricity.
3. Clearer Signals
Cell phones automatically compress data when they have a weak connection to their towers. This tends to lead to poor connections and dropped calls. Landlines that use copper wiring don’t have this problem. If you live in an area where cell phone reception is spotty, it’s always a good idea to have an extra line in your home you know will always have a signal.
4. Easily Separate Business and Personal
Research continues to show that maintaining a healthy work-life balance is essential to happy living. One way to do this is to separate your work phone and personal phone entirely. Having a phone in your house exclusively for family and friends is a great way to shut out work while you’re at home. You can use your cell phone for business calls and trading a few texts now and then.
5. You Have an Existing Phone Number
You’ve likely had a landline for quite a while and all of the important people in your life have your number memorized. You can, occasionally, have your landline number ported to a cell phone if needed, but it takes time and you probably have a cell phone number anyway.
6. It’s Backup
What happens if your cell phone breaks or you find yourself unable to pay your bill? Once your carrier cancels your service, people will still want to contact you. A landline provides an affordable backup in case of emergency or a loss of your mobile service. Because landlines are generally less expensive than cell phone service, you’ll have an easier time paying your bill.
7. Saves Money
Believe it or not, having a landline can save you money. That’s because some companies offer discounts to people who are willing to bundle their Internet, phone, and cable services. If you already have a phone line bundled in with your service, your bill could go up if you cancel it, especially if you signed up when your provider was offering a discount. If you’re looking to set up DSL Internet in your home, check out local bundles offered in your area for good deals.
8. No Problem Finding a Landline
Cell phones are easy to lose. They’re small, unplugged, and can fall out of your pocket and into the couch cushions without you even realizing it. A landline is always there when you need it, hung up on the wall or sitting on the table. If you’re in a hurry, why waste time searching for a lost smartphone when you can head straight to your trusty landline?
9. No One Can Force You to Upgrade
Cell phone providers seem to always be coming up with new features and phones, which phase out the older models. Getting an upgraded cell phone can be expensive, but this is something you don’t have to worry about with a landline. You likely won’t be updating your house phone unless something happens to it. Even then, these landline phones aren’t very expensive to replace.
Whether your Internet provider requires you to have a landline or not, you can see there are plenty of good reasons to keep that home phone. They’re more reliable than cell phones, less expensive, and can help you in an emergency.
Photo Credit: Tim G Photography/Flikr

About the Author

Ben Kerns is a fan of all things related to technology and the Internet, especially when it comes to discovering new ways to further merge the two together. When he's not plugged in, he enjoys the great outdoors, healthy living, and singing off-tune to cheesy country songs.